Marain grammar extension v0.1

Status: adopted into this site’s community dictionary as proposed language, 2026-10-21. Proposed grammar is not an assertion about Iain M. Banks’s original Marain. Restored lesson vocabulary is explicitly distinguished from these inventions.

Sources: recovered Marain community lessons, especially 1, 2, 7, 12, 16 and 21; the site’s dictionary and lesson-rule audit.

Existing rules retained

• Seven noun cases: nominative, accusative, dative, originative, locative, comitative, and bare vocative/absolutive. Case marks grammatical role, permitting flexible word order.
• First-, second-, third-, and generic fourth-person pronouns, each singular/plural; no new personal agreement is required on verbs.
• Verbs are not obligatorily inflected for tense or person. Optional attested temporal locatives include bechumli (past), ikili (present), beyanli (future). No dedicated aspect system is established here.
• hanggra (“is it true that…?”) is recovered from Lesson 16 for yes/no questions. shay supplies who/what/which questions.
• hech “no/not/without” and its postverbal use are attested in Lesson 2. Its general predicate-local scope below is newly proposed.
• tcha (if) and ayng (then) already exist; retain their meanings.

Seven proposed dictionary entries

Romanisation	Glyph key	Meaning	Formation
ke	ke	predicate-complement linker (“to…”)	new grammatical particle
funuft	fOnOft	can; ability	fu (ability) + nuft (do)
gihwinuft	giwEnOft	may; permission	gihwi (permission) + nuft (do)
shuhztnuft	SuztnOft	should; advisable	shuhzt (desirable) + nuft (do)
kwemraku'ha	kwemrakOha	must; rule-bound	kwemra (respect rules) + ku'ha (need)
wolugnuft	wolOgnOft	intend to	wolug (plan) + nuft (do)
hangtcha	haGCa	contrary-to-fact if	hang (false) + tcha (if)

New grammatical senses of existing words

• anong (glyph anoG) already means possibility. Proposed clause-initial use: maybe/perhaps/might.
• hech (glyph heH) already means no/not/without. Proposed placement: directly after whichever predicate is negated.
• okehi (want), ku'ha (need), gih (allow), saynomag (begin), and nocht (stop) may use the new ke complement rule. Their stems remain existing vocabulary.

Proposed rules

Verb complement and reference

[subject.NOM] [modal or control predicate] (hech) ke [(subordinate subject.NOM)] [verb] (hech) [case-marked arguments]

The ke linker introduces an event or predicate complement. With no explicit subject, it inherits the matrix subject. When a subordinate subject is specified, mark it nominative. Case marking still licenses free argument order, while ke remains attached to its introduced predicate. This is a new rule, not a reconstructed one.

• ra'yuh okehi ke kabo maraynva. — I want to speak Marain.
• ra'yuh okehi ke geyuh kabo maraynva. — I want you to speak Marain.
• ra'yuh funuft ke kabo maraynva. — I can speak Marain.
• ra'yuh gihwinuft ke kabo maraynva. — I have permission to speak Marain.
• anong ra'yuh kabo maraynva. — I might speak Marain.
• ra'yuh shuhztnuft ke kabo maraynva. — I should speak Marain.
• ra'yuh kwemraku'ha ke kabo maraynva. — I must speak Marain.
• ra'yuh wolugnuft ke kabo maraynva. — I intend to speak Marain.

Negation scope

Under the proposed rule, place hech immediately after the predicate whose truth is denied.

Marain	Meaning
ra'yuh funuft hech ke kabo maraynva.	I cannot speak Marain (lack ability)
ra'yuh funuft ke kabo hech maraynva.	I can refrain from speaking Marain
ra'yuh ku'ha hech ke kabo maraynva.	I do not need to speak Marain
ra'yuh kwemraku'ha ke kabo hech maraynva.	I must not speak Marain
ra'yuh kwemraku'ha hech ke kabo maraynva.	I am not obliged to speak Marain

Question formation

Use recovered hanggra before a proposition; do not invent a second question particle or require English-style inversion.

• Recovered: hanggra kabo geyuh maraynva? — Do you speak Marain?
• Proposed extension: hanggra geyuh okehi ke kabo maraynva? — Do you want to speak Marain?

Retain shay for WH-questions and the existing noun-case marking.

Conditionals and counterfactuals (proposal, not automated yet)

Attested: tcha (if), ayng (then). A new compound hangtcha may optionally mark an antecedent assumed false.

• tcha geyuh kabo maraynva, ayng ra'yuh hakla maraynva. — If you speak Marain, I learn Marain.
• hangtcha ra'yuh funuft ke kabo maraynva, ayng ra'yuh kabo geyivil. — If I could speak Marain (but cannot), I would speak to you.

These are analytical equivalents of English would/could, not tense inflections. The phrase translator currently leaves general conditionals unresolved rather than pretending to translate them reliably.

Evidence boundaries and future work

The newly proposed ke, derived modals, general scope of hech, and counterfactual hangtcha are not present in surviving lessons. They are explicit community language extensions. hang, gra and hanggra were restored previously and remain marked as community-lesson. No old dictionary headwords were overwritten. Future decisions: aspect (habitual/progressive/perfect), broader modal constructions, nested scope, gender-neutral singular reference, and conditional compositional semantics.